


ain't no sunshine (when he's gone)

by Nielrian



Category: Animal Kingdom (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 13:33:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20390512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nielrian/pseuds/Nielrian
Summary: The hours, days, weeks, months after Adrian leaves for Indonesia, through the eyes of a broken heart.





	ain't no sunshine (when he's gone)

**Author's Note:**

> Shoutouts to both [notsodarling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notsodarling/pseuds/notsodarling) for being my sounding board and perpetual cheerleader and also to [Christchex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/christchex/pseuds/christchex).
> 
> Title paraphrased from 'Ain't No Sunshine' by Bill Withers. I was listening to [THIS](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWVe1GGvs4U) cover version, specifically.

He doesn't know how long he sits there, body curled against the railing, metal bars digging into his shoulder blades, heaving with the effort to suppress sobs. Long enough that his legs go numb and his back starts to twinge painfully. He gets up, wipes his eyes with the dirty bandage around his hand. 

He walks. He leaves the Scout parked at the pier. He’ll come back for it later. Or he won’t. It doesn't matter. He walks slowly, at first, then faster, faster, until he’s nearly at a full run, ragged breath pounding in his ears over the relentless rush of the ocean. He walks, slows until he stalls out, shaking legs sending him stumbling into the wooden guard rail. He keeps walking. He walks until the commercial buildings near the pier melt into the residential, the homes and cookie-cutter condos all dark and shuttered against the night. He walks until the neighborhoods start to look familiar with their pastel colors and little picket fences. He walks until he finds Baz’s house. Craig’s house. And Craig, sitting with his back to the water. 

He says nothing. To his credit, Craig only asks one question. One word. The only word that matters.

Renn comes out in bare feet, body dwarfed by an oversized sweater, hair piled atop her head, looking as tired as he feels. Her eyes move over them, side by side on the rock wall, and she offers Deran the couch. He takes it, too raw and emotionally exhausted to do much more than curl into the armrest, knees to his chest. Craig drops a blanket over him with his free hand, the other occupied with the swaddled lump of the baby. His nephew. 

He wonders if they made it to the airport yet. If Adrian is still cursing his name in the backseat. If the plane took off on time. In a few hours he'll be landing in Hawai'i, there and gone again before dawn, and Adrian will see the sun rise long before it touches Oceanside.

He doesn't sleep that night.

\---

It becomes a habit, not sleeping. It's easier that way.

He stays three days at Craig’s, going in to the bar early in the mornings and working until his eyes feel gritty and swollen with lack of sleep, then returning to crash - literally - on their couch, limbs heavy and slow with exhaustion. Renn doesn’t seem to mind. He finds this odd. He tells her this. 

“I don’t mind the change in company,” she says, eyes down and slightly unfocused as she absently rocks the crying baby. “It’s nice to see another face every now and then.”

She asks him if he plans to stay longer, if she can make up the spare room for him. He makes noncommittal noises until she retreats back to the room she shares with Craig. He doesn’t come back the next night. 

\---

The house smells musty and humid when he enters, like it tends to do when they’ve closed up all the windows. The front door squeals its desire for WD-40, just like always. There’s a fine layer of sand in the entryway, just like always. Adrian’s car keys sit frustratingly just outside the bowl, just like always. 

Their favorite pair of shorts hanging half out of the hamper, the brand of cereal they both like sitting atop the fridge, the trophy on the shelf. 

The bed still smells like Adrian. 

Like sweet shampoo and spicy aftershave and the ocean, always the ocean. Deran used to joke that Adrian must be part dolphin or something, his skin always smelled like salt water no matter how many times he showered. It lingered in his hair, in the soft place behind his ear, the hollow of his throat, a trail of salt for Deran's lips to follow.

He can’t bear to lay in the bed for more than a few minutes before he’s up and out again, pacing, restless. He throws open all the windows to the cool night air and goes to sleep on the deck instead. 

The adirondack is uncomfortable and unforgiving, and he knows from experience that he’ll have slatted bruises all up his back come morning, but the idea of sleeping inside, alone in their bed, turns his stomach. So he makes do. 

\---

He dreams about him. When he does sleep, that is.

Sometimes they’re hazy, formless things, just the echo of him like a whisper in his periphery. Sometimes they’re mundane and unimportant; doing dishes at the sink, Adrian elbow deep in soapy water, standing under the shower spigot at the beach, bodies tucked in close to share the spray, driving in the Scout, wind and speed and sunshine. Sometimes they’re all large, pressing hands and warm, sweat-slicked skin and choked, breathless moans and he wakes hard and full of shame, sick and shaky. It's like his brain’s muscle memory or something, inserting Adrian into a space he no longer occupies.

He starts drinking. Well. He starts drinking more. Anything to drown out the dreams beneath that layer of warm oblivion. It feels good to lose track of time, to not wonder for one moment where Adrian is or what he’s doing. Or if he’s safe, alone in a country where he knows no one, doesn’t even speak the language. If he’s lonely. If he’s scared.

He switches from beer to whiskey to anything that will knock him out. Just for a little while.

\---

With Smurf gone there’s a new scent on the air, blood in the water, and it attracts more than sharks. It’s as though every crook on the coast can feel that there’s a shift in power coming, something looming on the horizon. They hear of someone pulling a big job upstate, big enough and bold enough to attract some major attention, and for a time it seems all eyes are on that. Their little community of felons and lawbreakers seem to hold their collective breath.

The Cody boys come out strong, if not at all subtle. Deran’s never met this Mike guy and has no idea what he did to deserve the beating he’s got coming, but he’s happy to help give it. After days of feeling numb he revels in the way his blood pumps wildly through his veins as he beats a man nearly unconscious. They stand together, the four of them, and for the first time in their collective lives they’re free to do things their way. 

Things are changing, yes, but the Codys are still here, and they’re not going down without a fight. 

\---

The police come and question him just like he knew they would. They've been tailing him for a week straight, dogging him in their patently nondescript black sedan, always a careful three cars back. Amateurs.

Two detectives in pressed suits come by the bar on a Sunday afternoon. He didn’t even know detectives worked on Sundays. Neither one of them is Pearce, which he musters up enough energy to be interested by. Maybe with Smurf gone he moved on to bigger game. Or maybe he's just waiting for them to fuck up.

He answers their questions simply and directly. Yes, Adrian left him. No, he doesn’t know where he’s gone. Yes, they’d had an argument, and, yes, it had been non-violent. No, he hasn’t had any contact with him since. 

He takes the business card from the outstretched hand of the starch-bloused woman and tucks it into his pocket, tries his best to look like a man with a recently-broken heart. 

From the look she shares with her partner with the no-nonsense black tie he must appear pretty convincing. 

\---

Their first job goes well, all things considered. It’s planned in haste, but smash and grabs aren’t exactly rocket science. They need to make a lasting mark and they need to make it fast. Reputations are everything in their line of work. 

He uses his elbow to break the thick glass of the display cases, careful to strike in the right place so as not to slice his arm open, careful to keep his head down, hair covered, in case their casing somehow missed a camera. Careful, careful, careful. He grips handfuls of necklaces and tennis bracelets, methodically shoves them into his bag, eyes trained on the big ticket items. Gold. Diamonds. Stones. Reach, grab, stow. Reach, grab, stow. Reach - 

His hand stalls over a case full of bright rings. Gold, platinum. Expensive. The women’s dainty and fine with large, intricate diamond settings. The men’s all sleek lines and smooth finishes.

“Get a move on,” Pope growls in his ear, his bag full of heavy watches swinging into Deran’s side painfully. He gets a move on.

Reach, grab, stow.

\---

Jess comes to the bar, just lets herself in the back door like she’s been there a hundred times before, like she owns the place, her usually kempt hair in a wild tangle and the stains of days-old mascara dried on her cheeks. He can tell she’s about a millimeter from the edge of something. 

She berates. He takes it. She accuses. He doesn't deny. She yells. He stares at the floor. He can’t tell her where Adrian is or how to contact him. He can’t tell anyone. One leak, even to spare her from a lifetime of grief, of wondering, of worrying, could jeopardize everything. Adrian has to be safe. He has to be, or this was all for nothing.

He remembers Jess at 20, how mature she seemed to him, then just 16, with her sun bleached hair in beachy waves around her face and the freckles across her nose that matched her little brother’s. How she used to give him rides sometimes when Craig couldn’t stay sober long enough to even remember he had a brother who needed one. If they asked nicely how she’d even stop for food along the boardwalk, laughing as they both tumbled out of her jeep to get in line. And he looks at her now and sees betrayal and vindication and grief and accusation and heartbreak all rolled into one twisted vision on her pale face. 

When she’s finished screaming and there’s a fresh dent in the wall from the novelty paperweight on his desk, she squares up, looks him in the eye and says, voice hoarse, “You know, years ago when he showed up on my doorstep with half his face busted open and asked me for money to cover an _MRI,_ a sick part of me was actually relieved? Because maybe he’d finally realize what the rest of us could always see from a mile away. What a piece of _shit_ you are, Deran Cody. Just like your mother. Just like your brothers.” 

She walks out the same way she’d come in. She turns, hand gripped tight around the open door. “You’d better hope I never see you again.” 

She slams the door so hard the framed photo on his desk falls over. He hears the sharp crack of broken glass.

\---

It’s been a month. Summer has officially ended in Oceanside, the beaches empty except for the persistent daily joggers with their unleashed dogs. Their little house by the sea seems quieter than ever in the absence of the warm-weather crowds. They never had a winter together in this house. 

The bed no longer smells like Adrian. When he discovers this, exhausted and drunk and closer to the edge than he wants to admit, he cries, can do nothing to stop the hot swell of tears that spill down his unshaven cheeks. He kneels and buries his face deep in the duvet, clutches and grabs for the sheets, the pillows, but the smell is long gone, replaced by damp and disuse. 

He stops coming to the house after that. 

\---

He dusts off the mattress in the attic. Does his laundry at Smurf’s under Pope’s annoyingly attentive gaze. Eats when he’s hungry. Sleeps when he’s tired. He doesn’t leave the bar for weeks, working until he can’t see straight, can’t think, climbing the ladder half-drunk and flagging and passing out in the loft. Lather, rinse, repeat. 

The staff treat him with kid gloves and it rankles him to watch them tiptoe around him, whisper to each other when they think his back is turned. He stops drinking where they can see. 

He attends family meetings and tries to contribute, takes whatever jobs they give him. Lookout, driver, heavy-lifter, whatever. He’s done it all. While things started to fall apart for J while Smurf was in prison, with her dead he seems to thrive. He shows up to meetings with designer sunglasses on his face and a head full of plans. Some of it good, some of it admittedly better than good. Pope circles him like a lion ready to strike at the first show of weakness. Craig checks his watch constantly.

They make timelines, go over plans and exit routes, plan contingencies. He systematically dismantles, cleans, and reassembles his gun, half listening. When prompted, he recites his instructions, word perfect.

He runs a hand through his greasy hair and waits for it to be over.

“Yo, D. You with us?” Craig leans into his eyeline.

They’re all watching him. Craig, his eyebrows raised. Pope, predator-still. And J, expression unreadable behind his dark sunglasses. 

He tucks his gun back into his waistband. “Yeah, I’m with you.”

\---

He still gets mail with Adrian’s name on it, mailers and leaflets and credit card offers, and every time he sees one it feels like getting kicked in the gut. He goes by and collects it now and then, when it’s been long enough that they start to overflow from the box, when he’s had enough to drink that he can stomach the sight of that pale blue paint. He throws out the junk but keeps anything that looks like a bill, puts them in his inbox to make sure they get paid. To the outside world it must seem pathetic, someone still paying their ex-boyfriend’s bills even after he’s long gone, but he can’t make himself stop. He’s already ruined Adrian’s life, for some reason the thought of ruining his credit is too much for him to handle. The credit of a man who doesn’t exist anymore. He’s well aware of how stupid it is.

He pays them anyway. Keeps the invoices, the receipts, all neatly clipped and filed, in the cabinet with his own. 

Every first of the month he sends money, off the books of course, to an offshore account to be bounced around until it finds its way to a real account under Adrian's fake name. He makes sure Clark Spencer has more than enough to live on, and live well on. 

He figures it's the least he can do.

\---

He gets a call from the police, and not the kind of call he’s expecting, considering he’s still likely being looked at for a missing person's case. 

A somber-sounding young dispatcher informs him that, “Mr. Cody, there’s been a break-in at your residence. We understand you have been away for some time. One of your neighbors saw the broken window and called it in not too long ago.”

It’s really not the conversation he was expecting to have when the caller ID displayed ‘Oceanside Police Dept.’, and the voice on the phone clearly must think he’s in shock or something, giving him instructions in a calm, even tone that must be drilled into him. 

He stands numbly on the sidewalk while Craig grills the uniforms, body taught and held at his full, intimidating height. They all look appropriately cowed. One takes him through the gate, up the stairs to the deck and shows him the window where the burglar entered, glass shattered in a semicircle around the now empty frame. The uniform holds out one arm in front of Deran like he’s trying to shield him from it. He scoffs; wonders what about him projects the idea that he needs to be protected.

They make him walk through the house and identify what items are missing, one trailing along, typing it all into some kind of report on a tablet, and it’s all he can do not to break down in front of three complete strangers when he realizes that Adrian’s boards are missing. All of them.

He keeps an ear to the ground and when, weeks later, he gets a tip on who might have done it - amateurs, just a bunch of dumb kids too fucking stupid to realize who they were ripping off, just seeing a house empty for days, weeks on end - he tracks the name to a location. Easily enough, considering Adrian’s favorite board is strapped to the motherfucker’s roof rack. It’s some shitty little walkup across town, looking rough and old like it was vomited between two larger buildings, and he walks right in through the front door, dumbass too blindly overconfident to even bother locking it. He finds the kid heating macaroni on the stovetop, oblivious, and beats him so violently he’s sure he hears bones break under his fist. 

The moron chokes out two names with a boot on his throat and Deran leaves him with a mouth full of broken teeth. He snags the set of car keys from the nearby hook and takes the kid’s car for good measure, board still strapped atop it. He keeps the board, takes the car to the chop shop out of spite.

He makes two more house calls that day.

\---

The kids from the freak commune do come for them. The less said about it, the better. Deran spends hours in the desert digging holes. He’s getting used to the feel of the shovel in his hands. 

Looking at the six imperfect graves, with their crumbling sides and inconsistent sizes, he feels nothing. He can’t remember the last time he felt anything at all. 

\---

Craig tells him, “Maybe you need to get laid, man.”

Deran almost punches him, the swell of anger so sudden and hot that his knuckles seem to strain with how tightly he clenches his fists; his body starts to move before he can think to hold himself back.

“Not while I’m holding the baby, you fuckin’ psycho!” Craig curls protectively around the bundle in his arms, angles himself away, anger and something sharp and protective in his eyes, and Deran has no doubt that if he makes a move Craig will lay him out. No big brother letting him win this time.

“Shut the fuck up, just _shut up_.” His voice is rough with disuse and exhaustion.

“Okay, _Jesus_. I just mean you could do with letting off some steam.” The baby starts to fuss, must feel the tension of Craig’s body, poised for a fight, and he ducks his head to shush it. “It’s been months, D.”

He stands there rocking his fucking baby and looks at him with something like pity in his eyes. Deran has never hated him more. He doesn’t look back as he lets himself out.

\---

Deran hauls the surfboard up to the attic and lays it against the wall next to his mattress where it’ll be safe. 

Beneath the mattress is tucked his burner phone, a matching set to the one he knows rests at the bottom of Adrian's backpack an ocean away. He pulls it out sometimes, lets the weight of it rest in his hand, tempted to dial the number just to hear the sound of his voice, even distorted over an international connection. But he resists. It's for absolute emergencies only, and if Adrian answers it he'll have to dump it. Those are the rules. He'd drilled him on it and everything. So under the mattress it stays. He leaves it on the charger, turns the ringer to max volume, loud enough to wake him from just about anything. Just in case.

\---

“Jesus, will you stop moving around back there?” Craig’s voice from the driver’s seat is half concern and half frustration.

“Well, it fuckin’ hurts!”

“Well, maybe if you’d done your fucking job we wouldn’t be here.”

The job goes south. It’s his fault, he knows it is. He hadn’t taken into account that different night guards might have different rotations. Stupid. Careless. An amateur mistake, the kind of mistake he hasn't made since he was younger even than J, and he has the deep, ugly gash of a bullet in his bicep to show for it. 

“I said I was sorry, alright. We got the money, didn’t we? So shut the fuck up.”

“No, Deran, I’m not going to shut up. You could have gotten killed tonight, you could have gotten us _all_ killed. I got a kid now, man, I can’t have us making dumbass mistakes like that.” He slams a hand on the steering wheel, meets Deran’s eyes in the rear-view. “What is with you, man? You been drinking again?” 

“Fuck off,” he barks, teeth gritted around a grimace of pain. Like Craig has any right to talk, when he's spent the majority of the last fifteen years fucking obliterated.

“I mean it, you need to get your shit together. You’re sloppy, you hardly ever show up and when you do you barely say two words. My fuckin' kid barely even knows what you look like, for Christ’s sake.”

The ride to Tijuana isn’t long, but he feels every bump and jostle down to his bones. He clutches the bloody rag over his arm and tries not to throw up, curled on his side where he lies out of sight of the border patrol, their argument stalled as they approach the crossing. 

He ends up with a saline drip, a bottle of antibiotics, and a neat line of stitches bisecting the lion on his arm. He sets his jaw and shakes off the offer of morphine. 

“It shouldn’t scar too badly,” the doctor says, tying off the last stitch with practiced hands. 

“Huh?” 

“In a few weeks start putting some scar cream on it and it’ll heal up just fine. Your ink might be a bit worse for wear, though. Shame. It’s a great piece.”

He grunts. He’d gotten it when he was just 16; one of Craig’s friends who ran a shop down near the boardwalk who owed him a favor. He remembers sitting in the highback chair doing his best not to let show how much it fucking hurt, hands clenched into obstinant fists. Adrian perched next to him on a stool, looking wide eyed and a little bit in awe. He’d always hated needles.

“Dude, it’s going to look so sick,” he’d said, and he’d patted Deran on the arm, warm fingers lingering a moment too long. Deran had smiled, sharp and crooked; shrugged him off. 

The doctor wraps him up and removes the IV with its now empty bag. “Take it easy for a few days, and if you develop a fever or if there are any signs of infection go to a hospital right away. And try not to step in front of any more bullets, okay?”

“Thanks for the advice. Craig’s got your money up front.”

He doesn’t speak a word on the ride back to Oceanside.

\---

Deran doesn’t like Angela. She reminds him of Julia in all the worst ways. In all the ways that add up to why he hasn’t had anything harder than weed since he was a teenager. He can smell it on her, the desperation, the need, that manic energy of addiction, the same kind he sees in Billy, and it repulses him. 

Worse than that, though, she reminds him of Smurf. Words and gestures all dripping in sweet honeyed sugar and beneath it the kind of manipulative ruthlessness that drove him from his mother’s side years ago. She always has an angle, a different game to play with each of them, and he’d simply stay away if it weren’t for the fact that now she’s fucking around in family business. She’s got some hold over Pope, some cord around him that keeps him from orbiting too far, and Deran can see from a mile away that she’s using him. For safety, for power, for money, he doesn’t know, but what he does know is that eventually something will give, and when it does it’s going to be messy.

She’s been throwing Pope’s name around town, writing metaphorical checks that she can’t hope to cash, getting them into shit that doesn’t and shouldn’t involve them. And there must be more to it than Deran knows, because he doesn’t understand why Pope doesn’t cut her loose. Maybe in his way he really does love her. Maybe he let her too close, told her too much. Maybe he thinks he can save her, protect her. As if the Codys can really protect anything that matters.

She’s smarter than he gives her credit for, though, because when he takes his concern to Pope he finds that she’s beaten him to it, spent nights whispering into his ear, driving a wedge between them - all of them. She stands there, in the very hallway where Craig had taught him how to tie his shoes, junkie-thin arms wrapped around herself in a parody of fragility, and watches as Pope throws him out of the house he grew up in.

He stands there in the driveway, newly torn shirt hanging askew, and wonders when the hell things got so out of control. Pope follows him through the gate, arms bunched and shoulders set like he’s ready to show why he never lost a fight when they were kids.

“Get the hell out of here, Deran.”

“She’s not Smurf.”

“What?” Pope stops short, falters like he’s run into a solid wall.

“She’s not Smurf and she’s not Julia. You don’t owe her anything, Pope. Do something about this shit before she gets us all killed.” 

“I know she’s not - she’s not Smurf.”

“She’s wearing her fucking jacket, Pope. Walking around like she owns the place. Using your name, _our name_, to stir shit up. I don’t know what the hell she’s getting out of this, but you’d better figure it out fast, because I am not running another job - I’m not doing _shit_ while she’s still here.”

He doesn’t look back when he goes. Not this time. 

\---

Another month comes and goes and when he gets a notification that his usual payment has bounced back he tries not to panic. When he sends another payment through and receives the same notice a few days later it’s no longer something he can control. 

Without money Adrian won’t last long. Even if he somehow gets a job, has learned the language well enough to find work, the pay won’t be good, not for a foreigner with no work history. He spends a day pacing his office, desperately trying to figure out what he can do. He has no backup plan. Partially because it was all put into place so fast and he’d had little choice, made do with what he could in the short time he’d had to do it. And partially because, even right up until those words had left his mouth, he’d been operating under the assumption that he’d be there with Adrian to look after things. All alone, and without Deran there to help him, he doesn’t know how Adrian will manage. The money in the account will last him for a while yet, but eventually it will run out. He needs to know how long he has to figure out a new plan.

Eventually he decides to take the risk. Technically the account is in his name, too. Well, _technically_ it’s in Jacob Reid’s name, but it hardly makes a difference. He uses a proxy and locates the account, praying Adrian hasn’t changed the login credentials. He hasn’t, and when he logs in he, at first, thinks there must be some mistake. He does some mental math. Then he drags the calculator toward him and does some manual math. It can’t be right. There’s thousands of dollars here. Tens of thousands of dollars. Too much. 

Adrian hasn’t touched a single penny. 

He doesn’t understand. Each of them had had cash in their packs as a backup, but not nearly enough to live on for very long, certainly not _this_ long. There are no withdrawals and no other deposits, only Deran’s monthly deposits in a neat column. 

Something ugly and all-consuming begins to rise in his chest, a feeling he knows all too well. Fear.

\---

That ‘eventually’ comes sooner rather than later, it turns out. J, through whatever creative means the kid possesses, finds out exactly how Angela got out of prison early. What little understanding had begun to grow between them is extinguished in an instant. In their line of work it’s once a snitch, always a snitch. And to turn on family? It doesn’t go over well. 

Deran only hears about it later and even then it’s only second-hand. He doesn’t know exactly what happened, only knows the aftermath. Angela, bag in hand, is out, left on her own volition. He doesn’t know what J did to drive her away, but as one knot in his chest eases another rises to take its place.

Days later and he’s back at the house, the four of them in the sunken den, the mood dour. 

“Angela knows a lot of shit,” Craig says, and it’s the echo of those words, those _same_ _words_, that settle in Deran’s gut like a lead weight. 

He starts to laugh, can’t help it. They all turn to look at him at once, but he can’t stop; he feels slightly hysterical, and the laughter just keeps coming. Pope growls, low in his throat, moves like he’s about to shut Deran up himself. Craig and J both stand, get between them. 

He gets up, suddenly sobered, and moves to leave. He doesn’t want any part of this.

“Let me know what you decide,” he says, and goes.

\---

Craig arrives hours late for dinner. Deran has a snide comment ready on his tongue when he catches sight of Craig’s face. Color high in his cheeks, his eyes bloodshot and half focused in the fading light. If he didn’t know better he’d say he looks high. But no, because tucked into one arm is the baby, and, all things said, Craig has thus far been careful around him. There’s a cumbersome looking diaper bag looped over his opposite shoulder. 

“Renn left,” Craig says, and drops onto one of the lounge chairs, bag slipping to catch awkwardly in the crook of his elbow. 

“What?” Deran says, “Left where?” 

“I don’t know, I don’t know, man. I got back and her bags were in the hallway. I didn’t - I didn’t realize she was... I didn’t see - she said it wasn’t right, that she couldn’t - she needed - ” He breaks off, words all fits and starts, bottlenecking in his mouth. He swallows thickly, throat moving. “What kind of mother leaves her own kid?”

His eyes cloud, and tears well, spill down his cheeks. He’s shaking, the bright yellow onesie clutched in suddenly unsteady hands. He’s got an empty house and a seven month old baby and a bag full of diapers and clearly no idea what to do next. 

Deran reaches out, lifts the baby from his arms before the inevitable happens. It takes him a moment to figure out how to hold it, limbs, both his and the baby's, suddenly awkward and cumbersome, and eventually settles the struggling thing against his chest. He’s heavier than expected. Craig puts his face in his hands. His shoulders slump, shudder. 

The soft snick of the sliding glass door and Pope comes to them, gait even and gaze direct in that unnerving way he has. 

"What happened?" he says, eyes sharp.

"Renn took off, left the baby."

Pope seems to process this for a long moment. He looks at Craig, bent nearly in half - looks at Deran, squirming infant held awkwardly in his arms. Tilts his head. 

He takes the baby from Deran, raises it above his head, sniffs it. 

“He needs to be changed. Give me the bag, I’ll do it.” 

Deran reaches, snags, hands him the bag.

“Go to Craig’s and bring over some shit. Baby stuff. Clothes.” He turns to Craig, baby Nick settled now in his arms, and Deran spends a moment trying to reconcile the image in his mind, somehow having forgotten that Pope practically raised both of them. 

“You’re staying here. For now, at least.” With that, he hoists the bag and retreats into the house. 

\---

J is late to a meeting. Misses another one completely. 

“Sorry,” is all he offers. “I had something I had to take care of.”

Pope’s eyes never leave him the entire night.

\---

He doesn’t know why he’d thought he could do it. 

He’d downloaded Grindr again. Clicked, swiped, typed, all with numb fingers; mind fogged with one-too-many whiskeys and far-too-little common sense. He doesn’t know why he thought it would help.

The guy who shows up isn’t at all his type; too short, too stocky, too bland, but he’d been close by and available at almost a moment’s notice and Deran wasn’t looking for anything but a distraction. He watches impassively as the guy drops to his knees with no preamble and gets to work on Deran’s fly.

He tips his head back, lets his eyes drop closed, tries his best not to feel the alcohol roiling in his stomach. The guy barely gets a hand down his pants when it happens. Deran opens his eyes and, head tipped back as it is, can see the bright white of Adrian’s surfboard in the attic, gleaming in the dim light, still propped in its place next to his bed. He’s not proud of what happens next. He’s pretty sure near-hysterical tears are not a normal reaction to almost getting your dick sucked. At least not for most people. To his credit the guy takes a hint and takes it fast, awkwardly patting him on the shoulder before taking his leave.

He deletes the app with shaking fingers.

\---

A typhoon hits Jakarta and Deran forgets how to breathe. He watches the breaking news coverage come up on one of the bar’s TVs and wonders if this is what people mean about having an out-of-body experience. He can’t move or think or speak, can only watch, entirely numb, as they cut to footage of entire city blocks destroyed or damaged beyond repair, neighborhoods flooded, trees uprooted. The ticker at the bottom of the screen reads ‘CATEGORY 4 TYPHOON STRIKES WESTERN INDONESIA...DEATH TOLL CLIMBS AS RESCUERS WORK AROUND THE CLOCK TO LOCATE AND EVACUATE SURVIVORS.’ 

When Deran regains feeling in his legs he runs for the back office. Scrambles up the ladder. Unplugs the burner phone. Dials with shaking fingers.

‘The number you have dialed is not in service. Please hang up and try your call again.’

He takes a deep breath. Re-checks the number. Dials again. His hands are ice cold.

‘The number you have dialed is not in service. Please - ’

He doesn’t make it to the garbage can before he loses his battle with the rising nausea. 

\---

He keeps calling over the next few days, doesn’t give a shit about the rules. The call never goes through. He spends a full day in bed, the phone on the pillow next to him. He spends a week moving around in a fog. Heather and Juan keep the bar afloat, opening and closing on schedule every day. Heather brings him food that he can’t stomach eating. Juan does inventory for him, signs for the deliveries. They keep the rest of the staff going. He makes a mental note to give them all a raise.

Craig shows up, takes one look at him and starts throwing piles of scattered clothes in a bag, shoves Deran in the car. Deran falls asleep in the backseat, bright sun on his face, and wakes to the clatter of the gate at Smurf’s - Pope’s - house opening. Pope meets them on the patio, Nick in his arms. Craig drops onto a lounge chair, gestures for Deran to do the same. 

“You look like shit, man,” Pope says; bounces the babbling baby on his hip with practiced hands. 

He _feels_ like shit. He feels empty and worn thin and just so fucking tired. Craig takes Nick, goes into the house to put him down to nap, returns with a six pack. Passes them around. They drink in silence. The house somehow still feels empty even with all of them here. Bleak. Bleaker still when he realizes that this is all they have. None of them have anything to go back to, no one waiting at home for them. It’s just them now, and that’s likely how it’s going to stay. Renn left, Angela’s gone, and Adrian - 

No. Everything they touch ends up soured. Driven away or tainted or dead. Maybe they’re not meant for anything more. 

There’s a noise from the house. He looks up. J stands in the doorway, one hand braced on the doorframe, watching. He meets Deran’s eyes. Seems to search his face. He retreats back into the darkness of the house. 

\---

His phone rings while he’s doing inventory. J. He leaves it to go to voicemail. It rings again. He swipes ‘decline’. It rings once more. Then a text notification pops up.

Come ASAP. Come alone.

An address follows. Nothing more. A residential address in Oceanside, not ten miles from him. Fuck it. He goes.

He pulls up in front of a nondescript tan house with Spanish style roof tiles and a minimalist front lawn with a stone walkway. J's truck is parked on the street nearby. He double checks the address, sends a text. Gets a reply in moments. 

Come inside.

No idea what to expect, he waits until he gets to the inset porch and draws his gun from his waistband. He opens the door, gun held at the ready. 

“J?” he calls. 

“Back here!” J’s voice comes from a room off the back of the house. Calm. No sounds of alarm or stress. He tucks his gun away again and follows the voice.

J sits at long wooden dining room table and across from him - _oh_. Across from him is Adrian. 

He feels the air in his lungs leave him in a whoosh. He stalls in the entryway. J stands to meet him. Adrian stays seated. He’s wearing a white pressed shirt, his hair slicked artfully back off his forehead. There’s a dark blue tie discarded on the kitchen table. 

“Adrian?”

“Hey, Deran.”

Adrian meets his gaze, the sunlight passing through the sliding glass door making his eyes appear strikingly blue. The corner of his lips quirk, like he’s trying to smile but can’t quite manage it.

“Deran, come sit down.” J ushers him into his vacated seat. He numbly sits, never taking his eyes off Adrian’s face.

“What the fuck is going on?” he demands. Adrian’s not supposed to be here, Adrian is supposed to be - “Why the hell aren’t you in Indonesia?”

“Because he never went to Indonesia. He never went anywhere,” J says, as he pulls out another chair and straddles it. 

“What?”

“Listen. Smurf told me, before she died, that Adrian had been talking to the feds and that you knew. You’d been acting strange and so I had you followed. I picked Adrian up before he even made it to the airport.”

He says it all calmly, like this is all just _fine,_ just normal, like the better part of the last year of his life hasn’t just been turned upside down. And, _fuck,_ Adrian has been here the whole time? Not even a fifteen minute drive away. The_ whole time_. With J. Who could easily have - 

His whole body goes hot and cold all over.

“Look, I looked into it, okay? If he’d talked we would have known about it. I know how these kinds of cops work.” At this he looks away, eyes drawn to something in the backyard. “You were right, he couldn’t go to prison. I got him a lawyer. A good one. She got the original deal put back on the table. That public defender was shit.”

Adrian ducks his head, a tight smile across his lips. 

“But why - why did - whose house is this? Why is he - why are you _here_?”

“It’s my house,” J says. “I bought it a while back, along with a few other investments." He leans forward, arms resting on the back of the chair. “And he’s here because the cops were still looking at him. They wanted him to flip on you, on us, and to do that they needed a CI. Everything else he knows is circumstantial. Certainly not enough to convict any of us. Without you as leverage they had nothing." He shifts, says matter-of-factly, "And because if you’d known he was here you’d have interfered.”

It explains everything. The bank account, the deactivated cell phone. He replays in his mind the interaction he’d had with the detectives. They’d questioned him, but they’d never actually said they were looking for a missing person. Only if he’d seen Adrian, talked to him, had any contact with him. He’d assumed that -

“The sentencing hearing was today.”

Deran’s head snaps up. He finds Adrian watching him, a little crinkle of distress between his brows. He searches his face, looks for any indication, any clue that might - 

J keeps speaking. “Two years probation. A pretty damn big fine. A good outcome, all things considered.” 

The sense of relief that rushes through him is unlike anything he can put into words. No prison time. He puts his face into his shaking hands; draws in a deep breath. 

J says to Adrian, “I’ll be outside,” and exits through the sliding glass door onto the back patio. It’s a long moment before Deran can speak and be reliably sure his voice won’t break. 

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Adrian says, and leans forward in his chair. “I hardly ever left the house, to be honest. I think J was worried you’d find out I was here and somehow ruin everything. The lawyer met me here. J brought me food and shit. I only had to appear in court twice. Once to address the judge and then just today for the sentencing.”

Deran casts his eyes outside to J, leaning against a tree, his phone in his hand. “But are you _okay?_”

Adrian follows his eyeline. “Well, I didn’t get the idea that he was about to take me out back and shoot me, so…” He shrugs.

Deran feels his face crumple. “Don’t joke - don’t joke about that. Did he - ?”

“Deran, I’m _fine_. Come here.” Adrian stands, his clean pressed shirt and slacks a far cry from the days-old sweat and dirty clothes Deran is currently sporting, but he doesn’t shy when Deran goes to him.

He puts his shaking arms around Adrian’s back, buries his face in his neck, breathes him in. He smells different. Different soap, different shampoo, probably, and he’s been months without surfing. But he still smells like the best thing in the world. 

Adrian doesn’t resist, per se, but he also doesn’t respond in kind. His embrace is slightly stiff, slightly muted, and his arms on Deran’s back are almost hesitant. 

Deran broke something vital in them that day on the pier, shook something between them down to the foundation, and he knows it. His instinct is telling him to push Adrian away, keep him away, for his own well-being and continued safety, but his _heart _\- his heart is pounding in his chest so hard he can feel it in his throat. His heart tells him to take Adrian, right now, and get the hell out of this place. Together, this time. No backing out. No mistakes. 

Deran reluctantly releases him, steps back; retreats to the other side of the table. The door opens as J re-enters, the cool breeze sending a shiver down his spine. The door sticks in its track and J spends a moment bemusedly pulling at it. He looks first at Deran, then Adrian. Seems to take in the atmosphere for a moment.

To Deran, he says, “I think it would be best if he stayed here for a while longer. The cops might still be watching him, and I’d rather not have them see you two together until things die down a bit.”

Deran nods. Tries to meet Adrian’s gaze. Adrian stares out through the window; his eyes look wet. J takes Deran by the elbow, escorts him back to the front door. 

Outside, J scuffs one shoe on the stone pathway, hands tucked into the pockets of his jacket. “I thought you needed to see him. You were looking pretty rough.”

Deran looks at the ground. “Thanks. And thanks for - ” he gestures vaguely to the house.

“He was loyal. Loyalty deserves to be rewarded,” he says simply. “I’ll let you know when things have died down.” 

Deran watches as he gets in his truck and leaves, dark sunglasses back on his face. He suspects there’s much more to it than that. J’s not that magnanimous, none of them are. He’d wanted Adrian close so that he controlled the outcome. Keep him close, control the board and the players, and see where the chips fall. Something tells Deran that if Adrian had been given those fifteen promised years he’d have never found out what happened to him. And there would be seven graves in the desert instead of six.

He turns to look at the house, Adrian somewhere inside. Despite everything, he feels lighter, the knot of anxiety and tension and grief that’s lived in his gut for so many months has dissipated, and when he superimposes himself now on top of who he was half an hour ago it’s like looking at a pale shadow.

He climbs into the Scout. Starts the engine. As he drives away he takes one last look at the little house in the rear-view.

He’s got work to do.

\---

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a ficlet, you guys. It really was. 
> 
> A few notes. So, I love Renn. I really really do. But I wanted to play with something I thought they might have been hinting at in season 4 with baby Nick. Because our POV character Deran doesn’t have a full perspective (or really any perspective at all) of the situation I didn’t want to hit too hard on it, but the implication I wanted to convey here was that she might have postpartum depression, that there might have been a fundamental disconnect with the baby and how she and Craig aren't really equipped to deal with that, considering the parents they had. A touchy subject, but one I thought was interesting. I imagine it will all be resolved some time after the timeline of this fic. Also I have no idea what the show’s intent is with Angela, but nothing she has done makes me inclined to trust her. It should also be noted that I think Deran has a complicated relationship with hard drugs, and that causes him to be very unsympathetic where he might otherwise show empathy. Finally, set photos and confirmations showed there was to be a scene where Adrian told his sister he was leaving the country, so this fic is working under the assumption that he did just that, so Jess knows he's fled the country alone.
> 
> I'm literally writing an essay about Deran and Adrian right now, that's how many feelings I have about them. 
> 
> Feel free to reach out to me on Tumblr [here](https://nielrian.tumblr.com/). Or on discord, username is the same. This bish loves to talk.


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